We are just about TWO WEEKS away from opening day of A Lord Of A Ring In A Suitcase: A Two-Part Trilogy (The Extendish Edition)!
We are currently in the middle of our rehearsal period for our summer show. Costumes are being made, songs are being arranged, and props are being built — it is VERY exciting!
Make sure to check out our TOUR SCHEDULE page and mark your calendars!
One year ago we started inching towards Middle Earth…
Throughout 2020 and 2021, Marlene (Princess Gwen) started adapting The Two Towers and The Return of the King. With the help of friends near and far (and the power of ZOOM!), we hosted a private online reading of this version (Version 2) of the script. This reading was incredibly helpful, showing us where big thorns were, and where moments of delight happened. Without the help of our friends, we wouldn’t be where we are today: hosting auditions for our production, under-going another major rewrite (Version 4!), and standing on the precipice of actual rehearsals!
Just like Fellowship supporting Frodo and Sam from Rohan, Gondor, and fields beyond, the support of your friends near and far is one of the best feelings you can feel. Is there something you can do to support a friend today?
The Peripatetic Players would like to personally thank Kristen Matia, Holly Kenney, Phill Correa, Julie Douglas, and Radek Antzak!
The Peripatetic Players are seeking 1-2 additional performers to join us for our summer performance & tour, A Lord of a Ring in a Suitcase: The Two-Part Trilogy (The Extend-ish Edition), an original adaptation of JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. This is in part a remount of our 2019 production (Part 1), and an original production (Part 2).
We are looking for actors who love working in collaboration with an ensemble and who are comfortable with physical/devised theatre, movement, and music. We are looking to diversify our current ensemble, so we especially encourage femme- and woman-identified performers of color to audition.
Our production features imaginative leaps, incredible assertions, feats of theatricality, and a whole lot of mystical beings, far away places, and rings. Performers will embody characters and help create the ensemble-driven music, atmospheres and settings of the play.
For more information and to read the full audition announcement, please visit this link!
Greetings, Friends of Idiot String and The Peripatetic Players,
The Peripatetic Players are back at it again, and we need YOUR help!
In 2019, we created an original work based on The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Our goal was to re-mount this production and adapt the other books in the trilogy into two plays.
This year we begin our quest again!
The Peripatetic Players are raising funds to re-start their quest across Middle Earth! This summer, we will be performing A Lord of a Ring in Suitcase: The Two-Part Trilogy (The Extendish Edition) across Bay Area parks and public spaces.
We’ll be at a different park each weekend, offering several performances at each location. So you can see one show, two shows in two days, or both shows in one day! All performances are offered FREE to the public, and your donations help keep this possible.
Even the smallest donations can change the course of this play! Here are some examples of what your contributions can do:
$5 – Gives us Warm Fuzzies
$10 – Ensures our First Aid Kit is well-stocked
$25 – Transports the Players to (approximately) one performance
$50 – Creates a set of mini-costumes for the audience to wear
$100 – Subsidizes the average park permit fees for one performance
$250 – Provides us with printed materials, such as scripts, postcards, and posters
$500 – Buys paint and supplies to make our scenery merry and bright
The lighting of the beacons (aka the start of the fundraiser) will begin on March 13 and concluding on April 3 with a celebratory feast (picnic) at The Golden Hall in Rohan (Cedar Rose Park in Berkeley). Whether you pledge your support with a donation or a social media share, we hope you can join us!
To make a donation, please visit our Go Fund me page!
THANK YOU!
The Peripatetic Players:
Sam Bertken, Joan Howard, Rebecca Longworth, Casey Robbins, Soren Santos, Kenny Scott & Marlene Yarosh
Notice
Idiot String (and thus The Peripatetic Players) is fiscally sponsored by Independent Arts & Media, a 501(c)3 organization. Donations are tax deductible through IAM. Independent Arts & Media (“IAM,” a tax-exempt public charity under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code) offers fiscal sponsorship to projects and producers which advance IAM’s charitable purpose: to raise the educational and social levels of the residents of the San Francisco Bay Area and surrounding regional and national communities, through the development of noncommercial, educational and cultural media, news and arts projects for the benefit of the general public.
More information about Independent Arts and Media: IAM is a San Francisco-based fiscal sponsor with a mission to support independent, non-commercial art and media projects and producers for the purpose of building community and civic participation and facilitating cultural engagement and free expression. IAM currently supports over 60 affiliates dedicated to non-commercial work in media and the arts, including publishing, theater, dance, music, visual art, film and video, journalism, history, and public-events production.
It’s been some time since you’ve heard from the Peripatetic Players, and we wanted to tell you – WE’VE MISSED YOU!
The past year (and then some) has been EXTREME in all the ways it could be. Ensemble members have begun and completed grad school, started new jobs and kept old ones, performed in and produced online performances, and some are even in the process of buying a home! Amidst all of that, we continue to learn and educate ourselves on how to defy white supremacy culture, in all its forms, and work towards consensus-based decision making.
It’s *a lot* and we are so happy to be doing it!
Our ensemble has been fortunate to safely gather a handful of times this late spring and summer, we look forward to continuing to come together as an ensemble and create art not only for ourselves, but for you!
You know how Shakespeare wrote all of those plays during the plague? Well, earlier this year, Marlene (Princess Gwen) finished writing the first draft of an adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. She started adapting The Two Towers in 2020, and finished The Return of the King in 2021. She hosted an online (private) reading, with friends near and far.
Rebecca (Madame D.) spent quarantine in graduate school at UC Berkeley, working toward a Masters in Education. This August she begins teaching 9th and 12th grade English at Albany High School.
Our next moves, so to speak, are to shake off the dust from our costumes, stretch our muscles, pull out our notebooks, and really start to train together as a theatrical ensemble. For those of you who might be unfamiliar with that means (and what we keep referring too), here’s an idea of what an afternoon (~4 hours) might look like when we participate in ensemble development:
One thing from these longer ensemble days is that we also look towards what we might want our next production to be. Part of this is us as a group learning how to reclaim/restructure/reinvent stories in a way that feels safe, appropriate, inclusive, exciting, and worth telling.
We hope to use the above work to develop an informal, invitation-only performance of A Lord of a Ring In A Suitcase for the winter, where we will formally introduce and welcome Crash and Inspector Quimbley. Check them out here & here!
Our utmost goal is to back in parks and public spaces by Summer 2022 for our annual summer performances! We’ve missed you all so much, and we hope you are finding ways to thrive in your homes & communities, and raising up those around you.
So much has happened since my last blog post in March. We of the Samuel Peaches Peripatetic Players have been busy behind the screens meeting virtually, generating material, and exploring current events to create artistic performance. The most important question, however, is:
How are you?
Can you believe that we are only halfway through 2020? What are some moments that you’d like to remember or let go of? These seven months have brought a myriad of life experiences to the forefront of our lives, and I invite you to reflect on what has happened in your life as I reflect what’s been happening for us.
The COVID-19 pandemic quickly thrust our theater company into an online forum, something that we chose to embrace whole-heartedly as a creative challenge. Our #POOOC2020 was such a fun experience, and what brought me the most joy was trying to come up with Obstacles for folks to do at home, and find something delightful inside. All of the Obstacles we created were designed to be done at home with common objects. We had “Gear Up to Get Down”, a dancing competition, and a DIY At-Home Obstacle course. We celebrated live on Zoom and Facebook on April 5th with our “Celebration of Obstacles Overcome” and had a great time.
We had been working towards producing our “main-stage marquee” show, a sequel to our last show, A Lord of a Ring In A Suitcase from Summer 2019. On Wednesday nights you would have found us virtually developing a script, making each other laugh, and participating in creative development exercises with our newest ensemble members, Kenny Scott and Leigh Rondon-Davis (check out our ensemble bio page for updates!).
With health restrictions changing so frequently, we decided to change course and started thinking of ways we could present a “To-Go” show to smaller audiences.
And then, in July, our community and our country were shocked into action by the death of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and too many other names to count. We reached out to our community, as did many other groups we admire, to provide resources to start discussions about examining racism and systematic violence against Black people, and how we can work to end racism within ourselves, our ensemble, and our society. While the work has been vital for us, the true intent is to build up our capabilities as an ensemble, and as individuals, to defy white supremacist culture, in all its forms; forms that we had unwittingly implemented into our regular way of making art. This kind of behavior, this kind of structure, has been learned and normalized and we are actively trying to unlearn and unnormalize it within our organization.
What does that all mean?
Personally, I’ve been reading great books, including Invisible: The Forgotten Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America’s Most Powerful Mobster by Stephen L. Carter, and How To Be An Antiracist Ibram X. Kendi. I’ve also been attending virtual meetings through SURJ Bay Area.
Administratively, we’ve been examining the “power structures” within the ensemble and learning more (and working towards) consensus-based decision making. We are taking turns being the agenda maker, facilitator, note taker, and time keeper in our meetings and rehearsals. (For a recent agenda I created, I brushed off some old improv games from college – there! Using my degree!)
And yet, still, with all of these things going on, there is one thing most on my mind:
You, dear audience.
How are you? I hope you are safe, and healthy. I hope you are finding ways to thrive in your home and in your community, and raising up those around you.
We can’t wait to see you in person, and until that time, remember –
“In the end it’s only a passing thing, this shadow; even darkness must pass.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
The Samuel Peaches Peripatetic Players are happy to report that they all managed to complete 16 obstacles in the Third Annual Particularly Obstinate Obstacle Course (POOC)!
Held Saturday, May 19th in the year 2018, the POOC was a rousing success!
The Skeleton Pirate was decimated by Pirate Gwen, Pirate Stephanie, Pirate Thumper, and Pirate Guy!
This year’s Obstacles were presented on a map, illustrated by our very own Sam Bertken:
Our very own treasure map!
Our Obstacles were:
| 1. The Pledge of Arrlegiance! | 9. The Kraken! |
| 2. Pirate Gwen’s Pirate Closet | 10. Tug of (Man O’) War |
| 3. Catwalk the Plank | 11. Cannonball Toss |
| 4. Crows Nest Climb Time | 12. Rogue Wave Rider |
| 5. Catapult Cannon Toss | 13. Shiver Me Timbers |
| 6. Skeleton Pirate | 14. Skarkline (a perennial favorite) |
| 7. Samuel Peaches’ Siren Song | 15. Sea Shanty |
| 8. Pirate Puns | 16. Time Fer Treasure! |
Thank you so much to all of our friends who joined us in Mosswood Park — it wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun without you!
There is still time to donate, if you’d like to help us bring FREE theatre to Bay Area parks and public spaces; donations made now through July 15th will be DOUBLED through our Matching Grant from the Easy Bay Fund For Artists.
Photo by Tim Guydish!
Shakespeare or Space Wars opens in less than a week! As the Players put the finishing touches on props, costumes and scenery… and even our script… we want to share an inspiration that has had a big influence on those essential elements of the play: Little Monster’s Mother Goose by Mercer Mayer. It’s a children’s book that features monster-creatures putting on a play — not unlike the Players!
Little Monster’s Mother Goose was published in 1979, meaning it was just in time for Madame D’s childhood bedtime reading list. And it must have had an impact… Little Monster must be convinced to put on a play, and how the play happens — including what happens in the audience — is more interesting than the nursery rhymes themselves.
In fact, it’s almost impossible to read this book in any sort of linear or methodical fashion — visual and word puns are scattered about, and the pleasure in reading it is seeking them out and finding something you hadn’t seen before.
What’s more, none of the characters can let an opportunity for a comment, question, or delicious opportunity to lap up spilled milk pass them by.
The audience is having a great time, too — even if they’re not behaving “properly.” 🙂
We hope you’ll be part of our audience for Shakespeare or Space Wars September 10-24!
We of the Peripatetic Players are influenced by a great many groundbreaking works of art and legendary theatrical ensembles, which inform both our process and our craft. One of the most seminal of these is surely The Muppets — and for Shakespeare and Space Wars, no Muppet episode is more resonant with our own creation than “Pigs in Space with Luke Skywalker”
I particularly love Piggy’s classic handling of the inappropriate comments about her weight — it’s clear she’s had to develop an iron-fist style of management to keep the show on track. Perhaps Mr. Peaches could learn a few things.
But that’s not all… the stars of Star Wars appear in the entire Muppet Show episode, number 17 from Season 4 of the show, and perform a spectacular dance number at the end.
And, many years and one corporate purchase later, Muppets cast as Star Wars characters to create mashed-up action figures have striking similarities to the casting of Peripatetic Players as both Muppets and Star Wars personalities. Gonzo as Darth Vader? Beaker as C3PO? Obviously. And make special note of the Storm Troopers…
Disney’s Muppet Star Wars action figures
We have our own ideas as to which Peripatetic Players correspond to various Muppets… some of them are definitely reflected above.
Which Muppets do you think most accurately reflect Peripatetic Players?
Thumper has been lobbying the Players to determine how they’d cast themselves in Thumper’s adaptation of Star Wars, named Space Wars. You’ll have to see the show to find out who’s who!
Shakespeare or Space Wars opens Sept 10, 2pm at the Berkeley Marina!
Here’s a behind-the-scenes peek at today’s Peripatetic photo shoot!
Guy and Thumper setting up the scrolling backdrop
Musical interlude
Guy is solving a problem
Meekins at work on a likeness of his idol and mentor, Samuel Peaches
Princess Gwen!
The dashing Mr Peaches
Mr Meekins
Ready to tackle SHAKESPEARE!!
Shakespeare vs. Space Wars photobomb
Space Wars vs. Shakespeare photobomb
Costume pieces
The Peripatetic Players 